Verilog Down Counter Logic Implementation

Question

I'm trying to write logic for storing trigger data. For example, I'm using a 3-bit counter as an address generator to store data samples. When I have a trigger event, I want to store the 4 data samples just before the trigger event occurred and the 4 after wards. So I use a 2-bit down counter when the trigger occurs and stops the counter when it counts down to 0 thus giving me 4 data samples from before the trigger and 4 data samples after the trigger. I'm having trouble implementing this though and get only 3 addresses once I start the down counter and it counts down to 0

//=== 8-bit wide loadable up-counter =============================
`timescale 1 ns / 1 ps
module fw_up_counter_3 (tc, count, d, ld, en, clk, rst);
output tc;
output [2:0] count;
input [2:0] d;
input ld, en, clk, rst;
reg [2:0] l_count;
wire tc;
assign tc = &count[2:0];
assign count = l_count ;
always @(posedge clk)
 begin
 if(rst)
 l_count <= 3'b0;
 else if(ld)
 l_count <= d;
 else if (en & ~ld)
 l_count <= l_count + 1;
 else
 l_count <= l_count;
 end
endmodule
//====2-bit wide loadable down-counter=====================
module fw_dn_counter_1(tc, count, en, ld, clk, rst);
 output tc;
 output [1:0] count;
 input en, clk, rst, ld;
 reg [1:0] l_count;
 reg [1:0] d = 2'b11;
 wire tc;
 assign tc = ~|count[1:0];
 assign count = l_count;
 always@(posedge clk)
 begin
 if (rst)
 l_count <= 2'b11;
 else if (ld)
 l_count <= d;
 else if(en & ~ld & ~tc)
 l_count <= l_count - 1;
 else if (l_count == 2'b00)
 l_count <= 2'b00;
 else
 l_count <= l_count;
 end
 endmodule
module trig_test(clk, tc1, tc2, en1, en2, count1, count2, rst, ld, trig, trig_loc);
 input clk, rst, en1, en2, ld;
 output [2:0] count1;
 output [1:0] count2;
 output tc1, tc2;
 input trig;
 output reg [2:0]trig_loc;
 fw_up_counter_3 counter1(.tc(tc1), .count(count1), .d(3'b000), .ld(ld), .en(~tc2), .clk(clk), .rst(rst));
 fw_dn_counter_1 counter2(.tc(tc2), .count(count2), .en(trig) , .ld(ld), .clk(clk), .rst(rst));
 always@(posedge trig)
 begin
 trig_loc <= count1;
 end
endmodule

enter image description here Anyone have any ideas on where I'm going wrong ?

Answer 1

counter2 is reset to state 11. When the trig rising edge occurs, it starts counting down.

Your code shows no way to ensure that the trig edge is syncronized with your clk signal. In your simulation, trig goes high very shortly before a clk rising edge. So on that edge, counter2 starts counting down --- going to the 10 state. But in between the trig edge and the clk edge, you did have a brief period where counter2 was in the 11 state. So you did in fact have counter2 in 4 different states after the trigger edge.

If you want to be sure to keep the counter in the 11 state for at least one full clk cycle after the trigger, you could either syncronize trig to clk, or delay the input to the counter en input for one cycle after the trigger is seen (essentially the same thing, but making a new syncronized signal).